I use LaunchBar as my primary application launcher on my daily machine and have been a happy customer for ages. There's a ton of subtle intelligence built into the application that often goes undiscovered until you type something by mistake

Up until today I've always launched NetNewsWire with my customary Control-Space, followed by 'netn' which works just fine. I was in the middle of typing a note about NetNewsWire with a colleague and had started abbreviated it as NNW and by chance I fired up LaunchBar and muscle memory fired off 'nnw' and it pulled NetNewsWire up to the top of the list!

Very cool. It would appear that in addition to the basic text string of the name of the application it also does some additional smart indexing based on capitalized letters, hence the efficiency of the 'nnw' shortcut. It also seems to index individual word elements, subdivided by the presence of capital letters in the names, so 'og' or 'graf' both get me to OmniGraffle in record time.

This is of course part of the ongoing effort to optimize all of those little daily repetitive actions and save a little more time here and there (so I have the extra moment to blog about it...)

Now here's something potentially useful. I'm often writing up documentation for clients and use PDF files that I've downloaded from various sites for supporting information. I can't simply copy the whole PDF into a Word document and dragging a multipage PDF document into Pages just imports the first page. So the usual solution is to note the URL where you can go get the document and put that into the text. Of course if you're like me, you have a ton of files downloaded and I certainly don't bookmark each and every one of them.

So what to do? Well, under 10.5 Apple has intelligently decided to give you some breadcrumbs in the extended attributes, including the URL from whence you downloaded the file. Except that it's tantalizingly out of reach. You can see it in the Get Info window, but you can't copy and paste it into your document. Nor can you click on the link to bring it up in Safari (note to self: file a bug report on that one). I'm not sufficiently masochistic to want to retype out some of these URLs that are usually buried 4 levels down on a vendor site so I went poking around on the command line.

Sure enough there's an easy way to get this information out fairly easily. On the command line the mdls command will happily dump out all of the various metadata information on the file, including the very useful "kMDItemWhereFroms" attribute. From there it's a simple copy and paste operation. Or you can be more specific and ask for this value only by specifying it by name:

Rands In Repose: Saving Seconds: "The point of this exercise is awareness. Once you’ve found one or two shortcuts that shave a micro-second here and there, you’ll become more aware of other places where you’re repeating yourself. You’ll start looking for time-saving shortcuts elsewhere because there is bliss in saving time."

Absolutely brilliant. This is a must read for anyone that spends any amount of time in front of a computer. I have to admit that it's physically painful for me to watch colleagues mousing around their desktop on either OS. At the end of the day, hunt and peck for a key is always going to be faster than hunt and click on a small target button.

Dialog boxes - why in the world do people (and I'm talking about serious computer geeks) click on individual text fields instead of tabbing and then grab the mouse to click the default button when they've got a nice big return key under their finger?

I wrote the article “Apple in the enterprise” partially based on the rather off the cuff idea of OS X Server being sold for virtual only sales. I’ve been mulling that thought over for last little while and the more I think about it, the more interesting it becomes.

First off, you have to remember that I’m coming from a high end virtualisation perspective where I work with medium and large businesses that are in the process of moving to virtualisation solution in order to take advantage of the ability to consolidate many servers onto fewer physical machines, abstract each machine into a few files in order to simplify backups, disaster recovery and business continuity. There are a few of very mature products on the market, most notably VMware ESX and Xen.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with a number of clients that also use Macs and OS X Server in their environments and for the IT administrators, these machines are starting to pose some issues since they are now different from all of the rest. Currently, you can safely (read supported) virtualise Windows Server in all flavours from NT up to 2008, various Linux Server distributions, and even Solaris x86.

xServes were different from the others in the near past since they were more of a UNIX machine with it’s own chipset and you could categorize them with the Solaris SPARC and AIX PPC based machines. But now that xServes are Intel boxes like all of the rest of the Apple line-up, they start looking more and more like a generic 1U Intel server to the average IT administrator.

If that administrator is in the process of consolidating all of his existing x86 workloads into a virtual environment, they start asking why are these machines special? Fundamentally, they aren’t.

Under the current sales model for OS X Server you have two options: either you get it ‘free’ when purchasing an xServe or you can purchase the retail version in a 10 client ($599) or unlimited client ($999) version. Currently I would suspect that the vast majority of retail OS X Server sales go to previously installed xServes since Apple has stuck to its no upgrade license policy so to move from major version to major version, you pay full retail for the latest and greatest. Now nothing is preventing you from purchasing OS X Server and running it on just about any Mac that meets the minimum hardware requirements which aren’t difficult to meet, but I don’t think that market is terribly large. I could be wrong, but up until now I have yet to run across OS X Server on a client site that’s not already running on an xServe.

Side note: OS X Server runs perfectly acceptably on any modern iMac, even a MacBook will do in a pinch of you’re not running a big file server with loads of hosted home directories.

Now the other aspect of Apple hardware is that it tends to have a longer useful life-cycle in the enterprise. So over time this would mean that there is a substantial park of installed xServes which are getting OS upgrades more often than they are getting replaced. From this I would deduce that OS X Server generates more revenue in software sales than in hardware sales. This is the exact reverse of Apple’s current model on the desktop, where the ‘free’ OS sells hardware.

When we return to the purchasing patterns, it would seem that the bulk of OS X Server sales are to people that already have an xServe so Apple’s no longer getting any hardware sales revenue. For those odd folks who install it on something else, it’s likely going onto an existing machine. So at the most basic level, OS X Server retail sales are not generating a lot of hardware revenue in the same way that OS X on the desktop sells MacBooks and iMacs.

Clearly Apple has an interest in maintaining the xServe platform since it generates software revenue over time. That said, any OS X Server sale should result in future software revenue as users upgrade to ensure that the latest version can efficiently manage the latest version of OS X running on their desktop machines.

Virtualisation is changing the server marketplace in a huge way these days. IT Directors are looking at technical audits that show them that the bulk of their servers are only using a fraction of the computing power at their disposition, and that consolidation ratios of 10, 20 and even 40 to 1 are feasible with massive savings realised in energy, space, cooling and maintenance contracts. Many of the sites that I visit are putting into place policies that require justification for the purchase of a physical server for a given task. Virtual machines are becoming the norm in the server space. When OS X Server is proposed to take advantage of the collaboration services, unlimited mail and calendar server accounts it looks good up until they see that they need to buy an xServe. The reply is often “can’t we do this with Sharepoint?” or “There are a ton of wiki server solutions for Linux”. While none of these approaches come close to the ease of implementation, maintenance and use of the Apple solutions, they will likely win out over any solution requiring specific hardware.

On top of that, the IT Direction wants to tout how well his virtualisation solution was able to absorb all of the applications used by the company so selling xServes becomes a very very hard sell.

With Leopard Server, Apple does offer the ability to virtualise OS X Server in the EULA. The current problem is that there isn’t a product on the marketplace that can do so reliably and in a supported fashion. (I haven’t taken a poke at the Fusion 2.0 beta that they demo’d with OS X Server at the last MacWorld so that might be hidden in there). Then there is the issue that Apple stipulates that you can only run said virtual machine on Apple hardware and quite honestly, if you’re serious about large scale virtualisation, nothing that runs on the Apple platform is up to snuff. Fusion and Parallels are decent enough for small environments and simple consolidation, but lack the mature connectivity options of virtual switches, VLAN management, embedded iSCSI and Fiber Channel multipathing, live transfer of running machines to other physical hosts etc. Parallels Server is moving in this direction, but currently it’s still stuck in the single server silo mode for the moment.

If we treat OS X Server as a software only product that has little benefit to running on Apple hardware then selling a version of OS X Server designed specifically for running on VMware ESX or Xen makes sense. Apple has practically zero engineering investment since the virtual hardware platforms are normalised and don’t change very often. This is not at all like running OS X on a generic PC with god-knows-what for a SATA controller and video card. This is just like an Apple hardware platform: very limited numbers of configuration options all with standardized hardware components.

Each sale of OS X Server that goes into an enterprise is very likely to result in ongoing upgrade revenue as the tools become integrated in the enterprise workflow.

All of that said there are a few investments that Apple needs to do in order to make this work. Number one is they need a switchers guide for IT Administrators. Some serious work needs to be done on the documentation and training side of the house, much the same way as was done at the consumer level. Other things that need to be pushed out are documents on how to integrate OS X Server into Active Directory in order to leverage the existing infrastructure to use the applications built-into OS X Server, specifically the collaboration tools, and then the messaging and calendar services.

This has already started. I’ve noticed that there are now some videos on getting started with Leopard server up on the Apple site. This is a good thing. However, every IT guy I know wants, no needs, to touch and see for him/herself how this stuff works. In order to get this product into a company, people will need to test drive it themselves in their own environment to see how it fits. The show and tell approach is perfect for iPhones and iPhoto, but when you’re planning on adding a server to your infrastructure, you need a little bit more hands-on experience.

I’m seeing better acceptance for Linux these days in many sites since people can quickly and easily take it for a spin in a virtual machine and poke at it. There’s no investment required. The virtual server hosting platform is already in place so trying out something new doesn’t even require plugging in an extra monitor or keyboard. Installing an OS into a virtual machine from an ISO image is often significantly faster than installing on a physical machine. The idea of trying new stuff out is starting to really take hold in these environments, especially since the barrier to test is so incredibly low now.

The ideal solution that I can see would be to offer an trial OS X Server appliance in the ovf format. You download the image that then request a trial key from Apple. Apple gets some idea of the potential marketplace before making the definitive step to selling the product. And in the meantime they generate some buzz around the product.

Apple lowered the corporate risk for purchasing Macs with Boot Camp. “If I’m not happy, I’ll just install Windows”. Positioning an OS X Server virtual appliance as the perfect collaboration tool for workgroups (even in an Active Directory environment) would be the perfect way for Apple to take a playing card from Microsoft’s book and embrace and extend.

Personally, I think that unless Apple gets seriously into adopting the coming server virtualisation trend, they’ll be missing a great opportunity. They have all the necessary pieces in place to make this work.

Additional note: Currently the best way to integrate UNIX systems of all flavours into an Active Directory environment is Centrify’s Direct Control software. But a server licence for Linux costs as much as OS X Server so if you’re interested in offering additional services based on standards and a better management experience for the Macs that are starting to arrive in your enterprise OS X Server is an excellent investment.

Can we get over this one? I keep running into more and more articles bemoaning the imminent demise of the Mac Mini. This is getting tired, especially since there's absolutely no reason to kill the Mini. Why not? In it's current incarnation, it's just about perfect. Now it's not necessarily the machine for everyone, but you have to remember what market niche it plays in, hint: it's not the bargain basement-entry level competitor. If that were the market, the Mini would not be tiny, silent and made out of notebook components. The Mini is in the imagination market. It's small enough that you can squeeze it into a car stereo mount, the design permits you to leave it in plain sight in the living room without embarrassment, and all of these places without making any noise.

Something to look at if you think that the Mini is going to be end of lifed, is to look at its competition. There are two current niches where the Mini plays well: the silent PC market and the HTPC (Home Theater PC) market - and there's a lot of overlap in there. The silent PC market is made up of DIY fanatics who will select each component of their machine one by one and build a custom machine that's probably in the minitower size, or the custom PC media PC market where the object is something that resembles a high-end audio component. The two major players that have solutions close to the Mini that I've been able to find are AOpen and Hush.

Good luck finding an AOpen reseller in Europe. I've done the tour of the online resellers in France with none of them run an online store. I did manage to find one in the US with an online store though (myAOpen.com/) where I ran the configurator to something roughly equivalent to the entry level Mac Mini and came up around $830 USD. The Hush machines are targeted directly at the media PC market that you want to put into your living room. However, like the AOpen, they're stupid expensive. The HUSH™ E1-Mini is a nice little PC tricked out for media work, but about four times the volume of the Mini and current sells for 825 pounds. (yikes! I just looked closer and it's 969 with the VAT). The basic entry level machine in this chassis is the Hush B1 Mini ITX PC which goes for 487 pounds. Prices from http://www.mini-itx.com/store A quick tour of the Apple UK store shows the Mac Mini starting at 399 pounds, incl VAT.

When you look at it from this vantage point, the Mini is nicely positioned for this specific market niche. Remember that Apple has never oriented itself to the mass market. It's going there slowly, but not whole hog - it's managing the margins well by keeping to the profitable segments of the market and avoiding the morass of the lowest common denominator where each sale must be subsidized by various spyware bundles to make them viable and still end up costing the seller in high support costs.

The one thing that would push Apple to replace the Mini would be the same reason they replaced the iPod Mini with the iPod Nano. They've designed a better one before anyone else in the market has caught up with their old one. However, there's nothing that would bring any massive new benefits to the Mini without adding more cost for dubious benefit. Apple could replace the internal drive with solid state memory, but at best this might shave 5-6mm off the height for massive additional cost. The only thing that I can see Apple changing about the Mini is to plunge into a stackable design. By expanding on that philosophy and separating the components into a series of stackable platters connected by a vertical PCI bus they could keep the form and spirit and step out ahead of the competition again. This would bring expandability to the "low-end" of the Apple market, but at some additional risk.

Expansion means multiple new items to stock, new SKUs to manage and keep track of in the supply chain, which is a non-trivial exercise. You don't jump in to adding products to the mix unless there's a good business case. The stackable, modular idea has been bounced around by various designers over the years, but the closest I've seen to date that really takes the idea and runs with it is Asus. The Asus approach is wireless connectivity between the modules which strikes me as inefficient (in 2008...in 10 years, I suspect that the line between a module and a "PC" will be awfully fuzzy). Another example that looks interesting, but doesn't go as far as I would go (remembering Steve Jobs' hatred for cables...).

One example and another that are pretty much in line with where I think they could be heading. Something worth noting is that Apple is again playing the design leader in this market space. Look around at the number of add-on peripherals specifically designed to mate and stack with the Mini, from Apple's own Airport Extreme base station, various usb and firewire hubs, and hard disks galore. I would say that this indicates a robust Mini user base that continues to grow in order to justify this level of interest in by aftermarket manufacturers. The Mac Mini is far from dead and if it disappears, it will certainly be replaced with something even more interesting...